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You may recall back in March, when a group of smart folks got together to form a game canon. They essentially nominated the ten most important games, ever. Gamasutra has begun a series of articles which will explore the storied history of each of these titles, and they've started with Sim Meier's Civilization series. Benj Edwards' history of Civilization begins with a rundown on the series itself, and wraps with a lengthy Sid Meier interview. Required reading, essentially. "Meier [is] comfortable with a legacy inextricably tied to Civilization: 'I think that if that's what's on my epitaph, "Did Civilization," that would be fine.' In musing about the fate of his beloved series, Meier finds himself satisfied with what the future might hold for the franchise: 'There's probably somebody getting ready for their first day of college that's probably going to be a part of Civilization in ten to fifteen years from now. I think it'll be around for quite a while.'"

They only make slanting references to Civ II onward. No mention of the fact that Civ spawned an entire user community, a complete user created manual on the early internet describing all the intricacies of the game and "cheats" (utilizing bugs) that could stretch the game score far beyond what was envisioned.Then there's the entire segment of history regarding CivNet, the user community generated effort driven by the fact there would be no Civ II originally. Or the fact that CivNet's efforts were wrapped in

All I want to know is how the damn Zulu spearman could possibly defeat ALL my tanks. HOW!?!?!?

That's easy, hundreds of them getting squashed gum up the treads immobilizing the tank. From there hundreds more take turns sticking their spears down the barrel of the turret causing the tank crew to expend all their ammo unclogging the main gun. Then its only a small matter of blocking the air vents of the tank with zebra skins and elephant dung and waiting for the crew to asphyxiate.

All I want to know is how the damn Zulu spearman could possibly defeat ALL my tanks. HOW!?!?!?

That's easy, hundreds of them getting squashed gum up the treads immobilizing the tank. From there hundreds more take turns sticking their spears down the barrel of the turret causing the tank crew to expend all their ammo unclogging the main gun. Then its only a small matter of blocking the air vents of the tank with zebra skins and elephant dung and waiting for the crew to asphyxiate.

In Martin Caiden's "Dark Messiah", a primitive African tribe knocks down a helicopter gunship squadron using hundreds of giant crossbows. Since the stealth aren't armored, they should be even more vulnerable to giant crossbow bolts than the helicopters.

In Martin Caiden's "Dark Messiah", a primitive African tribe knocks down a helicopter gunship squadron using hundreds of giant crossbows. Since the stealth aren't armored, they should be even more vulnerable to giant crossbow bolts than the helicopters.

I bet they would be even more vulnerable to giant catapult boulders. The question is, would they really be flying so low and what are the odds of hitting them?

OK here goes. It's not a matter of the spearman actually shooting down the stealth bomber. Rather the stealth bomber 'rolls a 1' to put it in RPG context. He fumbles. Catastrophic engine failure, the bomb fail to explode, or they explode in while still in the bay, etc. The spearman doesn't take down the plane, the plane just utterly fails.

Sorry, I can't have a cute/funny explanation all the time. I tried to come up with one but I'

All I want to know is how the damn Zulu spearman could possibly defeat ALL my tanks. HOW!?!?!?

Unfortunately, this isn't just a problem in Civ. I was playing Rise of Nations the other day, and had a very similar experience. I watched in awe as an archer sunk a missile cruiser that was sitting just off shore. Why is fixing this such an issue in all of these historical RTS or strategy games?

Why is fixing this such an issue in all of these historical RTS or strategy games?

It's an inherently difficult problem to scale things so near-tech-level rivals have approximately correct interactions while zeroing the chance against far-tech-level opponents. You need lots of special-case rules to handle interactions; numerical "unit strength" values and formulas don't work. Call it the "Hot Lead" problem, because it was bedeviling Steve Jackson long before any of these computer games came along.

It's an inherently difficult problem to scale things so near-tech-level rivals have approximately correct interactions while zeroing the chance against far-tech-level opponents.

World of Warcraft has an extremely effective way of dealing with a similar problem.

If you are significantly lower level than an opponent there is no way at all that any number of you will do any damage at all to an opponent. When the level difference is in the tens its pretty well impossible to harm them.

For those of us who old enough to remember Galaxy e-mail based game (and other variants like VGA Planets and Galaxy Plus): when ship had offence 4 times opponent defense it meant automatic kill (and when defender had defense 4 times greater than opponent offense attack did absolutely nothing). And this was long before even Civ 1.

I am not sure why such logic was not included into Civ. Personally, I am going with "catastrophic failure" explanation given by somebody above.

Maybe they're somewhat realistic, but the odds are a bit off. If a butterfly flapping it's wings can start a hurricane on the other side of the world, there's no reason that a spearman throwing a spear can't sink a battleship nearby.

Mod parent +1 insightful. I thank God that I didn't find out about Civ until right at the end of my college career. My friends and I used to take "Civ" days instead of sick days. Those were the days we'd call in sick to work because we'd been up all night playing Civ. Now I play on lunchtime and a turn or two at night on a PBEM game. Just enough to feed the addiction!

Canon has ment this since about 327AD when the Bible was canonized with all its current texts. Not sure what it would have meant before that, but it's also used in music and composition. There could be a connection there. Perhaps you're thinking of 'cannon'? Any other words have been used by the religious that were 'well-established'?

I understand that angst about "hacker/cracker". One deals with computers, the other is a white guy. I kid, I kid...

The word 'marriage' has been around since the 12th century AD or so. It was developed within the Church, and has since then up until recently meant the union of a man and woman. It's only in the recent decades that people have tried to instill the word 'marriage' with ambiguity.

The idea of all sorts of partnerships, life arrangements and what have you has been around since a social stratum

Neither a film canon nor a literary canon have anything to do with a "bible", so why should a game canon?

First, film or literary canons are specific to a particular author/artist, genre, era, geographic region, etc.

Second, film or literary canons do not arbitrarily limit themselves to "10 items"; they instead include as many as are required to provide a well-rounded assortment of high-quality examples of the film or literature of the particular author/artist, genre, era, geographic region, etc.

The idea is to establish a level of quality which other works can either reach or not (thus deciding whether they will join the "canon").

I think 10 is an arbitrary number but you need to be arbitrary in deciding such a cut off so it's a good start, pretty soon other people will bring up games of a similar quality which they think should be included, some will be included other's won't.

That's the purpose, to establish a baseline level of quality for "excellent", "provocative" and "insightful" games.

Smart people know "canon" has more meanings than the one you know about.

I generally don't like people complaining about weird modding on slashdot, but this time the ignorant post got modded up to +5 insightful, and the insightful/informative posts didn't get modded up at all. Read this message's siblings for more details.

Will Wright is working on that for his next game. You have to live the life of a video game designer who makes turn based strategy games. You start out in the 80s making EGA games, then you learn and research VGA graphics, Pentium chips, 3d Accelerators, and then you start new companies and then get contracted to make games for your former employers.

I can't wait until you can build and empire over 2000 years, and then walk through the streets ala GTA3. Maybe steals some cars and hit some pedestrians too, it would probably be straight if you didn' build the courthouse improvement.

You know, I've given some thought to a game like that. You know the 'great people' of Civ IV? What if, to gain the benefits of a great person, you had to play that person and complete a short RPG style quest in the civilization you've created? Like the 'Rush Hour' expansion to Sim City 4, where you can gain cash, popularity, and other benefits from completing driving missions.

I really like this sort of idea, but taken a bit further out. A game like civ, that creates content, for another game, like WOW or another MMORPG/RPG/ or even FPS. With the right kind of infrastructure and reporting / management tools. It's a neverending cycle of content and players that can evolve together. I think some games are drifting towards this, but I don't think anyone has seen the really big picture yet. Couple this with some good competition, prizes, and a serious rendering engine, and you h

My number one complaint is that it isn't addictive enough. I mean, to my knowledge no one has ever actually died from starvation or dehydration while playing Civ. We need to combine it with an MMORPG and a collectible trading card game. That should have players dropping like flies.

Personally, I would hate this. Civilization is (to my mind) a strategy game with a large-scale strategic focus and, furthermore, an open-ended strategy. That is, there are almost no "wrong moves." But quests are closed-ended with fixed goals, which completely reverses the Civ paradigm. I don't think they would mix well.

I had originally thought of this in the context of adding civ or sim like elements to an MMORPG. Then I thought about a game where you play the ruler of a noble house, not quite as wide of a scope as Civ, say a few hundred years. But it boils down to the major problem with most computer RPGs, they don't have a game master. You can still have a dynamic environment if you incorporate elements of a sim.In a Civ style game it doesn't make as much sense, even if the quests are minor and optional. I see it as som

I guess the difference is also that your concept of quests introduces a sense of randomness into the game that currently doesn't exist (much). When building a wonder, I know how long it's going to take. I know that if I shift one of my citizens from working that irrigated grassland square to that mined hills square, I'm going to finish the wonder exactly N turns faster (modulo events later in the game). I can balance the short-term goal of finishing the wonder against the longer-term goal of expanding the p

Check out Streets of SimCity. It was a Twisted Metal style car combat game where you would load your games from SimCity 2000 to play in. I thought it looked like a bad game, but its kinda similar to what you are talking about

I always hate playing against Ghandi. Usually, he expands quickly and makes friends with everyone...making the only way to be successful is to take him out. Of course, when you attack him, you get attacked by all his friends. I try to kill that peace lover early if I can.

I always love playing against Ghandi (at least in Civ4) because if I'm nice to him, I always have a useful ally the whole game. He won't randomly declare war on you despite 1000s of years of peace like say, Julius, Catherine, or the worst, Alexander.

My computer isn't up to the task of playing Civ4 but I see from the strategy guides that more attention was given to peaceful expansion and influence. The problem I always run into with these 4x games is that you have to claim a lot of territory early but it's tough to strike the balance between research, industry, and army. I'd always end up buttoned up in my cities/solar systems/castles until I had an economy together, constantly fearing attack by strong enemy forces, then by the time my fleet/army is ready to kick ass, the enemies have collapsed. Anyone else remember Master of Orion with the massive fleets of 32,000 weak-ass ships constantly attacking your planets and fleeing before the mass of defense missiles?

So, for people who have played a lot of IV, how are the non-military victories? Are they better than just building spaceships?

In Civ IV, you can win via Space, Diplomatically, or Culturally. Space is by far the easiest (and the easiest for the computer if you let them). The cultural victory is hard, but doable. The corruption rates are scaled very well in that a few cities can easily have the same or better technology learning rate as a similar Civ with lots of cities. If you keep ahead of the Tech curve & get most of the cultural wonders, you can win with 3 uber cities. The opponents are rather aggressive on higher levels, but culture enhances your defense, and computer opponents lose their aggression if you keep giving them techs & money (Which you can get by selling techs to others). You might need the right leader to pull it off on any significantly hard difficulty (I'm thinking Industrious + Philosophical would be best).

You can also take other cities via culture, and much more reliably than in III. So yeah, get a new graphics card & play. It's worth it.

I think it was Civ III where, after my civ started getting really powerful, all the other civs would eventually switch to fundamentalism and declare war on me. Naturally I felt I had to crush them by switching my massive industrial capacity to wartime production. I was relieved when Civ IV fixed the problem so that other civs behaved a little more reasonably. Honest, I don't LIKE nuking continents.

I think it was Civ III where, after my civ started getting really powerful, all the other civs would eventually switch to fundamentalism and declare war on me. Naturally I felt I had to crush them by switching my massive industrial capacity to wartime production. I was relieved when Civ IV fixed the problem so that other civs behaved a little more reasonably. Honest, I don't LIKE nuking continents.

Funny you should mention that. These games really allow for some broad mental role-playing, you get out of it as much as you put your imagination into it. I was playing the first Master of Orion and had a good alliance with the bird people, we were tight. Now sure, I know it was just a random roll of the random number generator but the bird people went and broke the alliance, attacked one of my planets, betrayed me. So I systematically crushed their empire to dust. Their emperor kept getting on the line, b

Yeah, the modern super realistic stuff is fairly easy to understand. But the way the best of the old games could suck you in and make you care about a handful of pixels.... the evil Ur-Quan blowing away my little Arilou skiff and the Shofixti making the ultimate sacrifice. Or (was it Independence War II) where you're with the remains of the fleet facing the advancing infected ships and the only option is to blow the jump gate isolating yourself and the other survivors forever from the doomed Earth.

Yeah, the modern super realistic stuff is fairly easy to understand. But the way the best of the old games could suck you in and make you care about a handful of pixels.... the evil Ur-Quan blowing away my little Arilou skiff and the Shofixti making the ultimate sacrifice. Or (was it Independence War II) where you're with the remains of the fleet facing the advancing infected ships and the only option is to blow the jump gate isolating yourself and the other survivors forever from the doomed Earth.

Star Control II! Yeah, hands down one of the greatest games I've ever played. The designers said they wrote the equivalent of a full-length scifi novel with all the dialog and descriptions. They weren't joking. And the in-jokes, oy. I remember how happy the Syreen were when you found their Penetrators. And fucking with the Illwrathi religion... not to mention their ships looked like the Rebel Alliance logo. And the Vux! "Sorry, we just can't stand the sight of you." Such fun. And I remember the shock of th

Hm... I don't remember my copy of Ringworld coming with the book. The printed material in quite a few of them would be bigger than the boxes games come in these days though.

It may have been a game of the year edition or something. All I remember is a friend got the game for christmas, didn't care for it, and gave me the book. It's in my book collection somewhere. If you remember the way game boxes were back then, they were like 90% air by volume. I think they did that just to make the games more noticeable on the shelves. These days, game boxes are tiny in comparison! I remember when they started doing the "value games" by reissuing semi-old games in jewel cases. "Where's the

Go back a little further though, and the boxes weren't mostly air -- they were packed solid, and HEAVY. You'd get a big manual, usually a quick reference sheet and a book of some sort. I remember a couple of games (Star Glider maybe?) that came with multiple novellas.

But yeah, somewhere along the line that all changed and the big boxes contained a CD and some coupons or other advertising.

I won my first few games of Civ III by culture, without ever knowing how I managed it at first. I just was very cultural it seemed.
I once won a game of the original Master of Orion in about half an hour with the humans. I just expanded like mad, made friends with everyone, and pumped spending into population. The game quickly reached the threshold for voting for galactic emperor, and I had a relatively large population and was allied with everyone but the Silicoid I believe, so I won.

Also, in the original Civ, this is sort of a non military victory.
I once had a game where I built only my first three cities in the best spots I could find in the near east of the Earth map. I then buffed the heck out of them. Diplomats back then had no support, so you could build as many as you want. I pumped my economy, and got the united nations wonder. I then surrounded enemy cities with diplomats so they couldn't work the land. When the population got sufficiently low, I would send a diplomat in

I once won a culture victory as the English in which the only battle I ever fought was when a barbarian attacked one of my spearmen during than beginning. This wasn't because I was trying to play pacifist...it's just the way that game worked out.

I find the diplomatic victory to be occasionally frustrating. Build the UN, get elected permanent Secretary General by being extra nice to everyone. The point of the game is playing, not winning though. I find it to me much more rewarding to forget about victory altogether and focus on experimenting with the game mechanics or toying with the AI. Meticulously micromanaging every city can make a few turns last all evening. It is worth the upgrade and purchase.
I would also like to point out that there a

I find the diplomatic victory to be occasionally frustrating. Build the UN, get elected permanent Secretary General by being extra nice to everyone. The point of the game is playing, not winning though. I find it to me much more rewarding to forget about victory altogether and focus on experimenting with the game mechanics or toying with the AI. Meticulously micromanaging every city can make a few turns last all evening. It is worth the upgrade and purchase. I would also like to point out that there are official expansions and many fine mods.

Looks like I need to upgrade the graphics card and start playing.

The best victory I've ever heard of from any 4x game was in a game I don't even know the name of. It was a space game. The way planetary conquest worked, you had to occupy the planet for an amount of time to reduce resistance. Once it was at zero, you were in control. The guy relating the story said he had his last planet taken over by another computer player. He thought the game was over but he kept getting the turn button. He looked at the

I am playing Civilization IV right now. We are in the midst of the release of the Beyond The Sword expansion, so now is a pretty great time to start playing. The multiplayer arrangement is damned slick, but I still prefer the pace of single player on epic mode, with a huge map and a cooler full of beer.

The vanilla game is great, having drawn on experience from the prior incarnations and tapped hardware for complexity they really kicked the crap out of a release version. The Warlords expansion throws s

Also, your post reminds me of a couple of great space colonization games. The first was released on floppy for DOS. It was calles Maelstrom. Something out there is claiming to be the modern incarnation, but it smelled of BS.
The other is Imperium Galactica, and I bet that is the one your friend was referring to. It is a smooth game, and the sequel was too.

So, for people who have played a lot of IV, how are the non-military victories? Are they better than just building spaceships?

A full blown military victory (world conquest) is actually pretty difficult in a normal speed game in IV, IMO. Depending on teh size of the map and the number of civs. Playing Epic or Marathon speeds make it easier, if only because you have more time to move units around... even if you're not technically producing them faster. Spaceship victory often becomes the "default" win for

My favorite was the lawyers/corporate branch/advertising campaigns method followed up by ecoterrorism. Lawyers can stop production in enemy cities, corporate branches can sap productivity into your own economy and advertising can make their populations very unhappy. Theres no real need to resort to anything so primitive as open hostilities. Unless you *want* to:)

Theres a unit in the game which can convert surrounding developed squares back

Can't I just read the whole goddamn article? Put ads in both columns on either side all the way down, I don't care. That would be better then reading what amounts to four paragraphs with two screenshots and an ad to justify creating another page.Do you really thing we all have ADD? I'm not going to click through 10 pages when it could be one page. Even magazines and newspaper articles give you something to bite on before they say continues on Page ***. Christ, I know you web people want to make money o

Can't I just read the whole goddamn article? Put ads in both columns on either side all the way down, I don't care. That would be better then reading what amounts to four paragraphs with two screenshots and an ad to justify creating another page.

Do you really thing we all have ADD? I'm not going to click through 10 pages when it could be one page. Even magazines and newspaper articles give you something to bite on before they say continues on Page ***. Christ, I know you web people want to make money off of ads, but please knock it off with this crap.

Search for the word "print" and you will find the "Printer Friendly Version" link. Click on this and you will have all ten pages in one long html file.

Can't remember how many hours I spent trying to get to the bottom of that danged dungeon to get the necklace. Only saw it happen once, actually. And it was the earliest game that could create interesting and fairly consistent random levels.